Sleepless Tonight
by Anime Girl23
Summary: Ashley Juergens was the only one that truly knew Ricky Underwood's story. Sometimes, she wished she didn't. Ricky/Ashley FRIENDSHIP


Hello again! I know. It's completely shocking that I wrote a fic that doesn't have any Ricky/Amy. Feel free to gawk for a moment, but don't forget to review once you're done and read the fic. This was written as a birthday gift to my friend Mell, so I hope she likes it. There may not be any Ricky/Amy and this is the furthest thing from fluffy, but how can anyone resist a bit of Ricky/Ashley friendship?

Note: This can be taken as a sequel to my other fic Unreachable, but it can also be read on its own. It takes place after Ashley tells Amy that she knows where Ricky is, but before Ricky comes back.

Disclaimer: Secret Life belongs to its respective owners who aren't me. I'm not making any kind of profit from this work.

Sleepless Tonight  
One-Shot

Ashley wasn't getting any sleep that night. She lay in her bed, tossing and turning as her alarm clock struck two.

She finally stopped, pushing her blankets away as she reached for her phone and scrolling through contacts until she got to the one she wanted.

To: Ricky  
Come home.

Her finger hovered above the keyboard for a second until she sent it. She sat there, flipping her phone in her hands as she waited for a reply she really didn't expect.

To: Ricky  
Please. Your son needs you.

Another text she didn't expect a reply to. She sighed, flipping her phone open again. He was probably asleep, but she didn't care.

To: Ricky  
She-

She deleted the message.

To: Ricky  
They aren't worth losing your family. Answers don't change anything.

Ashley bit her lip as the message sent, leaning back against her pillows and staring at the ceiling. She'd told Amy that she knew where Ricky was, but she hadn't told her everything. She held back like she always did.

Amy wouldn't find out—at least, not from her—that Ricky hadn't only gone to ask his mom why she never stopped Bob from hurting him.

He went to ask why she never tried to stop any of the other men either.

_"She didn't do anything," Ricky said softly, nursing a can of coke in his hands. He didn't look up at her, eyes locked on the can as condensation grew around it and slid to the table. "She never did anything. She did nothing to stop any of them."_

_The last sentence was said so softly that Ashley wasn't even sure she'd heard it. She sat frozen in her seat, eyes wide as she tried to figure out if he'd actually said what she thought he had. She wished that her mind was just playing tricks on her, but she knew it was the truth when his hands fisted around the can, making the aluminum crunch and soda spill around the rim._

_"Neither of them worked...at least not legally, and they needed the money for the drugs somehow. My mom only got so much with her...associates and that money went to drugs for her." He laughed darkly, somewhere between a chuckle and a sob that made her own hands tighten around her can._

She hadn't slept at all that night, her mind running on high as it tried to process everything that Ricky had told her.

Bob Underwood—his own _father_—had whored him out, given him to other men. Ricky had only been a kid.

Realistically, though, she knew that Ricky had never gotten to be a kid and, now, being a teenage father, he'd never get to.

She hated Bob for that.

She hated Nora for never stepping up to protect her only son, not from Bob or from any of the other men.

Ricky's words were still echoing in her head as she flipped her phone open again, indulging herself for a moment that she'd just missed the vibration of her phone. She hadn't. A grand total of zero unread texts stared back at her and she sighed, flipping it shut again.

She could still hear Ricky's voice, voice quiet and so dead that it had scared her as he listed off four names; Mitch, Wilson, Vince, and Carl. The men Bob had sold him to on a regular basis for years. No last names, probably fake first names.

Mitch, big and muscled, his eyes, Ricky said, still gave him nightmares. Somewhere in his forties when Ricky was six. He used to strangle Ricky, left marks all over his neck as he pulled a _six-year-old_ into unconsciousness time and time again. A danger, but he'd paid Bob enough to look the other way.

Wilson, he'd share needles with Bob before he'd...he didn't like condoms.

Vince, Ricky was sure, was ex-military. He'd been rough, enough that he would have put Ricky in the hospital more than once if Bob had actually bothered to take him.

Carl used to give him toys, little gifts for being "such a good boy". Ricky said he'd burned every last one of them before he'd been put into the system at twelve.

Ashley could feel her stomach churning as she pushed those memories back. She shut them back into their mental box, throwing away the images her mind had supplied. The memory of Ricky's voice went into another box, far away and safe from those men.

She wanted to protect him, even if it meant bringing him home to face the people that he'd trusted and been betrayed by. At least he'd be coming home to his family. He had parents that loved him right here, waiting for him to come back.

_"Who knows?" she asked, speaking for the first time in a while. He looked at her, almost startled by her voice for a second before they fell back to his can, now completely crushed._

_"My parents," she knew he didn't mean his biological ones, "Dr. Fields," he looked to her, "and you."_

_She couldn't help feeling a bit honored that he'd trusted her with this._

_"I'm sure Adrian's dad knows. I know he must have looked into my files."_

_"Did they catch them?"_

_Ricky shook his head and she was sure she felt something in her break. "The names they gave Bob...they weren't real. Nothing ever came out of the descriptions I gave."_

_She bit her lip, hard, one hand reaching out to lay itself over his. She didn't have to tell him she was sorry. He knew._

She knew he stayed up some nights, thinking about if he could have done more to catch them. He told her, softly as his hand curled into a fist under hers that he blamed himself for any child they hurt after him. She didn't try to convince him otherwise. She knew he wouldn't believe her.

Ashley jumped as her phone vibrated, the little piece of plastic flying out of her hands and to the floor. She scrambled out of bed, reaching under the bed for it and let out a groan of frustration as the ringing stopped and the display told her she had one missed call. It vibrated again a second later, this time telling her that she had a voicemail. She had to type her password in four times before she stopped typing too fast and got it right, gnawing on the inside of her cheek as the automated voice garbled on. She sighed as Ricky's voice came over the line.

"Hey," he said, sounding tired. "I'm on my way. I'll see you at school tomorrow."

It cut off there and she shut her phone, falling back onto her bed.

He was coming home.

She fell back asleep, phone still clutched in her hand just in case. He was having a hard time right now and if he needed her, she wanted to be there. She didn't have a lot of friends, but she was pretty sure that's what they did.

The End

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